A few months ago, I walked over to the Bethesda booth during the Penny-Arcade Expo in Seattle and played through a level of Rogue Warrior. I was literally blown away by how mediocre it was, and wondered if it was possible for Rebellion Games to turn everything around before the game was released in November. When November rolled around, the game didn’t release, being pushed back to December. When a game is released in December, its quality is immediately suspect, and it’s often considered to be a month that publishers ship games of low quality, essentially cutting their losses and hoping that a few foolish consumers might pick it up for the holidays. Rogue Warrior had everything stacked up against it when it was finally released, huge delays, a publisher shift, and a release date in December, but there was one thing that forced at least slight optimism: Bethesda. Bethesda doesn’t really make mistakes, as proven with the Elder Scrolls series and Fallout, so their support goes a long way. The hope was that the overall package would hold together, even if the previews didn’t, and that they knew something that the rest of us didn’t.

They didn’t.